“But Trump called it a hoax yesterday,” Raju pressed the speaker, as he discussed Epstein’s victims and the seriousness of the late convicted pedophile’s sex-trafficking crimes.

““What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him. He has never said or suggested or implied—I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented,” Johnson began.

“He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself. When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down,” Johnson said, adding a yet another element to the Trump-Epstein saga.

“The president knows and has great sympathy for the women who have suffered these unspeakable harms. It is detestable to him,” the Speaker and Louisiana Republican continued.

“He and I have spoken about this as recently as 24 hours ago. What he’s talking about is the Democrats who are doing this with impure motives. If they cared so much about this, why didn’t they do something during the four years of the Biden administration when the Biden DOJ had all the records?” Johnson said.

“They didn’t say a word about it. Now they’re doing it for political purposes—not everybody, but a lot of them. And that’s what the president’s frustrated about. And we all are that they’re creating a hoax just like they did with the Russian dossier because they think it’s going to somehow be mud thrown on him,” he continued.

“It’s not. He has no culpability in this thing at all. The president has clean hands. He wants all the records out. He has told me that himself,” Johnson said, before responding to a question from Raju about whether Trump would meet with Epstein’s victims.

“I suspect he probably will. Yeah, he has great compassion for them. The president has a very compassionate heart. He hates the fact that these women suffered those harms. He hates what Epstein is accused of and who he was,” Johnson said.

“And when he recognized that, when he realized Epstein wasn’t just some sort of socialite, he was an evil person and alleged to have been involved in evil schemes, and the president distanced himself, before he was president, from that, because that’s not who he is. And I think he’s being falsely accused and maligned, and that’s a frustration of all of ours. That’s what he’s talking about when he says the hoax,” he added.

PLAY: